It would have required an almost complete suspension of critical faculties to sit through the prime minister’s press conference about cutting red tape without seeing the obvious problems in his argument.

I’m all for getting rid of unnecessary laws, regulations and government guff. A good spring clean of the laws of the land is entirely in order. But doing it with another deluge of government guff seems just a little bit contradictory.

As we waited for Tony Abbott, a pile of booklets sat at the side of the room but officials prevented us from reading them. When they were handed out, just as the prime minister began talking, it was easy to see why.

Ostensibly directed at “policymakers”, the booklet began with “the seven regulatory impact questions”, such as “What is the problem you are trying to solve?” and “What policy options are you considering?” Seriously, do we really have bureaucratic “policymakers” who make up policy just for the hell of it, without any identifiable problem? And if we did, shouldn’t the government of the day sack them rather than writing a “regulation 101” booklet to spell it all out?

The booklet – on fine-quality paper coloured to look like down-market low-cost cardboard, and with a piece of red cardboard “tape” around it that you had to “cut” to read it – is part of a campaign that also includes a new website.

The main aim of the website appears to be to allow businesses and members of the public to make submissions about red tape they would like cut. Abbott proffered the “guesstimate” that a dozen or so public servants would be needed to monitor the suggestions, and said the ensuing benefits would outweigh the costs. That may be, but a quick flick around the call-in lines of talkback radio would suggest there might be quite a lot of people with time on their hands and cause for complaint.

Besides the obviously expensive frills on this “no-frills” PR campaign, the thrust of the government’s intentions – to conduct regulatory impact statements (RIS) on all new laws and get rid of unnecessary old ones – is in line with a largely sensible report from the Business Council of Australia some years ago.

But a few problems immediately spring to mind. Like how the government intends to take into account the reasons that regulations are imposed in the first place.

Abbott said the only time he has exercised his prime ministerial right to exempt a new law from a regulatory impact statement was the abolition of foreign ownership and other restrictions in the Qantas Sale Act – because it was urgent and because it was getting rid of a law, not imposing a new one. But surely the impact of getting rid of laws must also be assessed – in this case, for example, whether there was any impact on aircraft safety.

The prime minister also held up the Coalition’s changes to the former government’s future of financial advice (Fofa) reforms, which partially undo requirements that financial advisers put the interests of their clients first and regularly remind them that they are paying an ongoing trailing commission. Abbott said any professional person would always take the best interests of clients into consideration. But the reason the Fofa reforms were implemented was that debacles such as the collapse of Storm Financial proved that didn’t always happen. It is unclear whether the RIS looked at the dangers for clients as well as the benefits for advisers.

New governments always love deregulation. The Howard government had a similar early campaign. Labor went to the 2007 election pledging to wage its own war on red tape, with Lindsay Tanner the designated minister for “deregulation”.

In the end, regulations dubbed “red tape” can be useless or outdated rules worthy of extermination, or really important rules that people want and demand, rules that ensure our safety at work or in public places, or that our air and water and farmland is not excessively harmed by development proposals.

By all means do a legislative stocktake and toss out the unnecessary ones. But please make sure they really are unnecessary. And spare us the booklet and the website.